"The Senate Indian Affairs Committee held a high-profile hearing last week into the shady work of Republican-party lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is accused of fleecing Indian tribes. Everyone professed great hand-wringing sympathy for the tribes over how badly they had allegedly been treated. Oh, please. This is a trail of tears partly of their own making.

In one of the most famous cases, Abramoff lobbied on behalf of the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, which spent gobs of money to try to keep a tribal competitor from opening a casino that would eat into its own lucrative casino profits. The only principle at stake here was cash, cash, and more cash. And tribes now complain about Abramoff�s greed? �They were trying to protect their stash,� says the Rev. Tom Grey of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling.

Abramoff has garnered extensive coverage because of his proximity to Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, but the process by which tribes get casinos was hardly an example of clean government before Abramoff started getting rich off it. If you have obscenely well-heeled special interests � i.e., certain Indian tribes � dependent for their wealth on the obscure decisions of Washington bureaucrats, it would be shocking if corruption wasn�t the result."